Life and politics from the Sunshine State's best city

Deveron Gibbons makes appearance at Darryl Rouson campaign event, says he is running for mayor in 2013

in The Bay and the 'Burg by

There is a city named St. Petersburg and in it, you and I go about our days, enjoying all that the ‘burg has to offer.  In this reality, Deveron Gibbons was just issued a restraining order to stay away from his girlfriend after allegedly trying to run her over with his car.  In this reality, the downfall of Deveron Gibbons is being discussed on the pages of the St. Petersburg Times, on this blog and in hundreds of conversations occurring all over town.  In this reality, the Governor’s Office has been contacted — again — with detailed reports about Gibbons’ problems, just so that Charlie Crist knows that appointing Deveron to the St. Petersburg College Board would be a mistake, that putting Deveron Gibbons’ name on any more Host Committees for Crist’s campaign would be savaged by his opponents.

In this reality, Deveron Gibbons will never be elected dog catcher much less mayor of St. Petersburg.

In this reality, if you had to bet on whether Deveron will be in jail in four years or in City Hall, on which choice would you put your money?

Yet, there is a different reality that must exist for Deveron Gibbons, who casually stopped by Darryl Rouson’s Campaign Kick-off last night. Deveron told anyone and everyone who would listen that the “case against him has already been dropped” and that the police are going to charge his girlfriend with making a false statement.

Iisn’t Deveron’s argument about his girlfriend making a false statement his typical defense against any accusation?  When his embarrassing driving record was revealed, rather than admit that he had some minor issues — an admission that would have allowed him to move on from the issue — he told Goliath Davis and his other supporters that the Times was going to print a retraction and issue an apology.

Just like he told all of his donors and supporters he was ahead in the polls, just so he could get a few thousand dollars more from his contributors.

Contributors, evidently, who will be asked again to support Gibbons.  As clear as a bell, Gibbons told several people at last night’s event for Darryl Rouson that he will run for mayor of St. Petersburg in 2013, come hell or high-water. I recently outlined 10 reasons why Gibbons will never, ever be mayor of St. Petersburg, but I almost think I need to revise the list with a new number one reason:

DEVERON, YOU TRIED TO RUN OVER YOUR PREGNANT GIRLFRIEND! Such a heinous act is not exactly something that endears you to voters.

Instead of worrying about being mayor,  a close, former supporter of Deveron points out, Gibbons needs to worry about keeping his job with Amscot.  Even a loan-sharking company like Amscot will see that it has a problem on its hands by employing Gibbons as the public face of its company.

I know what it’s like to be down-and-out and the last person in world Deveron is going to listen to is me, but the guy needs to book it out of town for a year or two.  Go to Atlanta, where Gibbons has a lot of friends, and get his shit together.  It’s come to the point that, in St. Petersburg, Gibbons is starting to scare people.

Peter Schorsch is the President of Extensive Enterprises and is the publisher of some of Florida’s most influential new media websites, including SaintPetersBlog.com, FloridaPolitics.com, ContextFlorida.com, and Sunburn, the morning read of what’s hot in Florida politics. SaintPetersBlog has for three years running been ranked by the Washington Post as the best state-based blog in Florida. In addition to his publishing efforts, Peter is a political consultant to several of the state’s largest governmental affairs and public relations firms. Peter lives in St. Petersburg with his wife, Michelle, and their daughter, Ella.

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